Many businesses, especially those with large numbers of customer accounts, periodically contact the customer by telephone to obtain updated account information, remind the customer of a past due account, collect on delinquent accounts, or conduct other business. In some installations, the operator sees a telephone number upon a screen and the number is either manually dialed by the operator or dialed by the operator's terminal in response to one or more keystroke inputs by the operator. The operator must then wait to determine if the call is answered, the call number is busy, is out of service, or has been changed, or to determine if there is no answer. For each call placed, there may be an elapsed time of several minutes wherein the operator is looking at the screen, dialing the number or causing the number to be dialed, and waiting for a response from the called number, which causes a significant part of the operator's time to be spent on nonproductive tasks. Therefore, there is a need for a method and an apparatus which automatically dials the call without operator intervention or control and only connects the operator and displays the customer account record, which is resident in the mainframe or host computer, if the call is answered.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,493 discloses a system which automatically performs the call dialing and call progress monitoring functions, thereby relieving the operator of the need to manually dial the telephone number and wait for a response from the called number. However, a system such as that disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,493 requires that a customized interface program be written for the host computer. This arises because the dialing system must tell the host computer which telephone number has been called and which operator station has been selected for the audio connection so that the host computer can call up the record for the called number and transmit the record to the display of the selected operator. Applications software written for a host computer typically provides interface software so that the computer may exchange data with the operator terminals. However, the interface program generally does not include provisions for exchanging information with a dialing system such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,493. Of course, a customized applications program, including the necessary interface software, can be written but the cost of such a customized program is often prohibitive.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus which allows an existing customer account servicing system to be extended or upgraded to provide for automated dialing and call progress monitoring without the necessity of modifying an existing applications program or purchasing a customized applications program to accommodate the extended or upgraded system.
Also, the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,493 only accommodates outgoing calls. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 062,944 discloses a system which can automatically process incoming calls, thereby relieving the operator of the need to answer the call, ascertain the identity and/or account number of the calling party, determine what business the calling party wishes to transact, etc. It would be beneficial if an existing system could be upgraded to provide for automatic handling and processing of incoming calls.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus which allows an existing customer account servicing system to be extended or upgraded for automated processing and handling of incoming calls without the necessity of purchasing a customized applications program or modifying an existing applications program to accommodate the upgraded system.